Drying slabs

[Jay106n]

So I scored about 2.5 cord of slab wood from a local mill (1 of 2 bundles pictured). Hemlock and pine mix. I plan on mixing it in with my hardwoods to make them go further, shoulder season, and general bonfire wood. It will be interesting to see how these stack up, with no uniformity whatsoever. I don’t know how long they have been cut so I can only assume they are green. It’s sort of reverse firewood tactics, it’s been split, but not cut. Anybody have any experience drying slabs and stacking techniques?

 

[moresnow]

Hopefully somebody will chime in that uses slabs. Guessing you cut it and stack it like normal. I have access locally and would like to try some!

 

[edyit]

My inlaws have a bandsaw mill, so i get slabs to burn also. mostly pine but it is great for shoulder season / kindling / bonfires. i just cut them to length and stack them normally. the nice thing about them is they usually dry in one season.

 

[johneh]

Cut them up and stack as normal or if in length
stack as lumber with stickers between Slab
wood drys very fast one hot summer should do it

 

[TedyOH]

Slabs I cut for projects I sticker them for airflow, If you don't plan on cutting those to length now I would do the same.

Sent from my SM-G930V using Tapatalk

 

[kennyp2339]

criss cross on a pallet to get optimum air flow

 

[Jay106n]

So it ended up being more work and took a lot longer than expected. In addition, the weather did not cooperate this year with so much rain, but I finally got most of it cut and stacked. Some of the bigger slabs were too big and I had to split them anyway, which I chose to do by hand. Most of it was really wet, so maybe next year I’ll get some use out of it. Some pieces were so thin, they stacked up in a strange way, but really tight. Probably not much air flow going on there. When I had a lot of flat pieces I tried to angle stack them, to allow a triangle of space in between for airflow, otherwise it would be flat surface stacked on flat surface. I still have about 1/3 of the last bundle uncut, which I will probably just use for bonfires.

 

[FTG-05]

I got a trailer load of those slabs once. Never again.

I could never find an easy and more important, safe way to cut the slabs down to size.

 

[Ashful]

I got a trailer load of those slabs once. Never again.

I could never find an easy and more important, safe way to cut the slabs down to size.

If you were getting them on a regular basis, it might be worth building a simple sawhorse of full slab length, with stations to cut at your regular length interval. That would make quick and safe work of them, but likely not worth the time invested, for a one-time use.

 

[maple1]

Pretty easy to cabbage up a quick sawbuck.